Black History Month: The effort to diversify PRP Fire Department

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WAVE) - In the old days, everyone was a firefighter around Louisville, including slaves. Black and white people fought fires side-by-side on bucket brigades.

Petition drives to allow Black citizens to join the Pleasure Ridge Park Fire Department failed until 1923, when Louisville hired 10 African American firefighters, assigning them to Engine 8 firehouse near 13th and Broadway. Engine Company 9 was an all-Black firehouse in Louisville by 1937. Then, in 1955, the Louisville Fire Department joined the integration movement, assigning Black firefighters all over the city, not just at Engine Companies 8 and 9.

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More than 65 years later, the PRP fire department may have been the last to diversity. When PRP Fire District Board Chairman James Taylor joined the PRP Fire District board a few years ago, a department with 95 full-time firefighters, there were no Black firefighters.

”I get on the board,” Taylor said, “I didn’t know how big and how huge it was that we didn’t have any African Americans here. I couldn’t believe it.”

”There were no recruitment efforts,” PRP Fire Chief Doug Recktenwald said. “We tried to at the time. In 2017, our recruitment was to hire from our volunteer force, and when you have a predominately white neighborhood and you get your volunteers from your neighborhood, there’s no way to get diversity.”

So, Recktenwald said he went to the Louisville Urban League to ask for help.

”I said, ‘all I want is somebody 18, has GED or high school diploma, and then we’ll train them,’” Recktenwald said. “Essentially, think of it as a trade school.”

The population of Louisville/Jefferson County is 23% Black. The Louisville Fire Department is around 16% Black. PRP Fire hired their first Black full-time firefighter in 2019.

”African Americans didn’t know how to get into the fire business, the fire department,” Taylor said. “No way to try to get in, so that’s the reason why we’ve tried to bring more African Americans in.”

”When we show up on the scene, we would like to look like our community,” Recktenwald said. “So if we’re constantly showing up in African American neighborhoods with just white folks, that becomes an issue. We want to look like our citizens.”

Now, just over a century after 10 Black firefighters were allowed to join Louisville Fire, PRP Fire hopes to have 10 soon, with two Black firefighters already on board and eight of the 33 current candidates being African American.

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